General discussion

This is brilliant. I got this one from coppermine, and it uses a 'flashthumb.php' and 2 flash files located in the root directory. This pulls out thumbnail images etc. at random by making an sql query and portrays them in a scrolling strip accrros the page. It needs a little adaptation, for which I could do with some easy help from a long-serving Drupaleer. The flash files are ok as is.

Specific code has to dropped into anycontent*.php page(s) to call these files and functions into a table. This needs no adaptation. The flashthumb.php code does and is as follows:

$xml = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <slideshow><settings><image_folder></image_folder><time>5</time><fade>3</fade><repeat>true</repeat><captions>false</captions></settings><images>';
if ($FORBIDDEN_SET != "") $FORBIDDEN_SET = "AND $FORBIDDEN_SET";
$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM {$CONFIG['TABLE_Files']} AS p WHERE filename LIKE '%.jpg' $FORBIDDEN_SET ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 13");
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) 
{
	$type = 'thumb';
	$xml .= "<image><file><![CDATA[".get_pic_url($row, $type) ."]]></file><caption></caption></image>";
}
$xml .= '</images></slideshow>';
echo $xml;

So things that need to be chaged are the relevant TABLE_??? etc. All help welcome. I have the .swf files handy for download at:

http://www.mightyzero.com/press/web_development/scrolling_th

I've been wanting to this site for a while now and after finding drupal it all came together. My only problem now is that I need some help picking a domain!

The site is a news portal on technology in the developing world. This is a labor of love for me and I am excited to get started. I have two choices for domains and it is driving me crazy!

1) TechAndDev.com, easy to remember, terms are related to the topic, and I also have the long version "TechnologyAndDevelopment.com". The thing is that my site's focus has expanded past just "development".

Is there a module for citation and reference management in Drupal? I have never seen such a thing in any CMS yet. Would be cool!

Am I the only one who used the crap out of taxonomy OTF? Are there any plans to update this to 4.6?

As it is now, the forums feel like an add-on to Drupal. This actually is the case with many CMS solutions. Instead of integrating with the content and being a place to discuss the content, they are a back-page type of thing which allows people to talk about "other-stuff".

What I propose for the forums (and what I've always been looking for in ANY CMS) is to where the forums are completely integrated with the rest of the site and are the center of discussion.

As it stands now, articles, stories, etc are discussed through comments. Now comments aren't bad, but they encourage users to just post their initial thoughts, read others, and never come back. Forums on the other hand, often lead to in-depth interactive discussions.

And this is a major problem. Often forums on sites seem empty while their front page is full of content. You could always just make a forum post, paste the text or link of an article into it and say "hey, let's talk about this", but isn't that redundant when comments are essentially replies to a forum post?

What I'm suggesting is that forums become "discussion containers" so to speak (not literally). The comments of any type of node should be tied to forums. And the forums themselves should simply represent categories, and not seperate sections.

So for example, lets say I post an article about Halo 3 which I put under my "Xbox 360" and "FPS" categories. This article should automatically by listed in the forums, which would consist of "Xbox 360" and "FPS" and whatever other categories I have. Let's say I also post a poll under the "Xbox 360" category. If I'm a user and decide to browse through the "Xbox 360" forum, both my original article about Halo 3 and the recent poll would be listed as forum topics in the forum itself. So any user could go through and discuss in the forums whatever they'd like.

I see many people mentioning them as good Drupal hosts, but I'd love to hear comments from those who use them, and also like to see the speed of a website currently on Site5.

Also, does anyone know if you can use PHPAccelerator on Site5?

Thanks!